


A Stranger I Know Well

by SoManyRegrets



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Faily YouTube Family, Family, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 17:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8676988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoManyRegrets/pseuds/SoManyRegrets
Summary: “Phil’s got a secret boyfriend," Louise said. "That no one knows about.”

  “That is what ‘secret’ means, yes,” Phil told her kindly, patting her head and offering her one of the remaining chairs.

  “Does he not go to this school?” Caspar asked, kindlier still. “Does he live in Canada?”
Phil has a secret boyfriend, and everyone wants to know.





	

“Isn’t it a bit, well, weird?” asked Louise over her glass of wine. “You know… that you two used to…”

“Fuck?” Dan said, eyebrows raised, rolling his head over to look at Phil. “Dunno. Is it weird, Phil?”

All eyes at the impromptu party gathered in Louise’s hotel room turned to Phil, who was crammed into the end of the sofa not occupied by Dan. As usual during any party involving overage YouTubers, alcohol had played a significant part, and there were already several empty bottles lined up neatly against the wall.

Phil cocked his head, apparently unperturbed by the scrutiny. “Not really? I guess it was probably a bit strange a couple of years ago, but not so much now, no.”

“Weirder when subscribers bring it up,” Dan countered.

“But they don’t know for sure-“

“No, they don’t, for which I thank god every day,” Dan took a fortifying gulp of wine and pulled a face. “Why are we talking about this again?”

“I have no idea,” PJ said from the floor, head in his girlfriend’s lap. “But can we please stop talking about it now?”

“It’s my hotel room and I pick the topic of conversation,” Louise said repressively.

“And out of everything in the universe, you chose to talk about my relationship with that one?” Dan jerked his thumb at Phil, who was well stuck-in to the room service cocktails.

Louise waved a dramatic hand. “Can’t I be interested, too? Everyone else is, and unlike everyone else, I get insider information, so spill.” She patted Dan’s knee. “It’s research. For all that fanfiction I write. It’s all about you and Phil.”

“If you are writing, can I please not die in this one?” Phil broke in to ask. “I’m always dead and using my afterlife to help Dan to find some kind of closure. Gets kind of boring after a while.”

“Aww,” Dan cooed, poking Phil’s foot where it was wedged against his thigh. “Don’t worry, Phil, I’m sure Louise won’t kill you to further my character development.”

“Oh, he’s already dead,” Louise said, reaching for the latest bottle of wine on the coffee table. “I’m making a move on you now, Howell. I’ve always fancied a toy-boy.”

“They are overrated,” Phil said. He’d shut his eyes and looked very at peace with the world. 

“Yeah, but the thing is,” PJ said, apparently deciding to bow to the prevailing wind and get in on the conversation, “you guys still live together. Like, _I_ know there’s nothing going on because you’re both transparent as fuck, but isn’t it a bit weird for people you date?”

“That’s not a problem, ‘cause they don’t date,” put in Cat, just visiting, from the one cushy armchair that she’d claimed as her own as soon as they got through the door. Dan sneered fondly at her, and she sneered just as fondly back.

“Well, I dunno,” Phil said, eyes still shut, “my boyfriend doesn’t find it weird.”

All movement ceased.

“You what?” PJ said into the intensely interested silence.

“Oh yeah,” Dan said, apparently just remembering. “Forgot him.”

“Yes, you do do that, don’t you?” Phil opened his eyes and shifted on the sofa, searching for the room service menu with his eyes. “Shall we get chips?”

“Oh no, no, no, no, no,” Louise said. “Boyfriend? Phil Lester? And no word sent to me? I am shocked and appalled but mostly intrigued – tell me everything!”

Phil groaned and stood up, waving the menu. “I’m running away and getting chips. Any more for any more?”

“Bro,” said PJ, staring at him lambently and upside down. “C’mon. You didn’t tell me this! What happened to bros before hoes?”

“Hey,” said his girlfriend, jostling his head on her knee. “Don’t call me a ho, bitch.”

“I love you, and you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me – Phil, spill!”

“I am not doing this,” Phil said with dignity. “I am going to get chips. Dan is coming with me to protect my boyfriend’s privacy.”

“Nope,” said Cat. “Dan’s staying. He doesn’t want chips, do you, Dan?”

“I don’t really want chips,” Dan admitted.

“Tough luck, still coming.”

“But Phil,” Louise said, eyes wide and guileless. “Whatever could Dan have to do with your boyfriend?”

Phil pointed at her with the menu. “Nice try, but Dan here has a mouth like a broken lock, and it’ll just take one of you to weasel it out of him and then all my shameful secrets will be out. So he’s coming with me.”

“Dan’s staying here.”

“Dan has never felt so loved,” Dan remarked, apparently to nobody. PJ grinned at him and Dan blew him a kiss. PJ caught it and tucked it into his pocket with exaggerated care.

“You’re such a loser,” his girlfriend told him fondly.

“C’mon, Dan. If you come with me to the bar I’ll get you a battered sausage.”

Dan shrugged and got up to leave. 

As the door swung shut behind them, Louise’s eye was twitching.

**

“Never have I ever –“

“No,” Phil whined, “I hate this game. It always ends up sexual and I _always_ end up knowing more about my friends than I ever wanted.”

Another winter weekend, another party as London froze and YouTubers huddled together for warmth, this time in Dan and Phil’s flat, given the general consensus that they had ‘all the good alcohol.’ They also, Phil had noted resentfully, had all the board games, and yet, every single time:

“ _Never have I ever_ -“ Dan said a little louder and Phil gave into the inevitable.

“Ok, fine. But I’m not going to go easy on you, Danny-boy-”

“Don’t call him Danny-boy,” everyone said, and they were ignored.

“-you are going down. With _spades_.”

Dan patted his shoulder. “Not a thing, Phil, but you’re welcome to try.”

Phil turned to him with a gimlet expression. Caspar, from the other side of the table, twisted his tumbler of booze in his fingers and watched with interest as Dan rounded up the rest of the motley collection. 

Bry came to sit next to him on one of the chairs. “Phil’s got that look.”

“What?” 

“I’ve known him a while,” Bry squinted into her glass like a war veteran at a saloon bar. “He’s got that look on his face. Dan’s going down.”

“I figure Phil’d enjoy that on, like, multiple levels,” Caspar said and Bry chuckled, warm and rich in her throat.

“Oh no,” Louise interrupted, evidently still bitter, “Phil’s got a secret boyfriend. That no one knows about.”

“That is what ‘secret’ means, yes,” Phil told her kindly, patting her head and offering her one of the remaining chairs.

“Does he not go to this school?” Caspar asked, kindlier still. “Does he live in Canada?”

Phil stared at him, betrayed. “Why do I like any of you? Why are you in my house? All of you leave, immediately. He _is_ a real person and Dan can vouch for him.”

“Dan would like us all to come the fuck on and play the game,” Dan said, busily piling cushions onto the floor for those without a seat. “Put up or shut up, Phil.”

“Fine. Never have I ever,” Phil began deliberately, “lost my virginity to somebody in this room.”

Dan’s eyes went huge and horrified. “Oh. Oh. Is that how it is? Is _that_ how it is? Fine!” He downed his drink in one. “Right. Philip. Never have I ever-“

“No no no,” Phil pointed at him. “You drank. Not your turn. Them’s the breaks. Caspar! You go.”

“Uh.” Put on the spot, Caspar floundered. “Never… have I ever…. Had sex in public.”

There was a pause and then the arguing started. Twenty minutes later, when they had hammered out a working definition for ‘sex’, ‘public’ and ‘genitalia’, four or five people finally drank. Phil took his head off Louise’s shoulder to glare at them all indiscriminately. “And that’s why I hate this game,” he said sourly to the room at large. “All right. Louise, you didn’t drink. You’re up.”

Louise’s eyes glowed with unholy fervour. “Never have I ever,” she pronounced with deadly cheer, “had a secret boyfriend.”

“You’re supposed to be my friend,” Phil said mournfully and drank.

“Wait, wait,” Carrie piped up from the floor. “Dan just drank. Dan drank too!”

Dan raised his eyebrows, unconcerned. “What? You all know I’ve had a secret boyfriend. It was Phil. For like two years.”

“Oh.” The room deflated as interest was lost.

“Nice try, bitches,” Dan smiled, complacent. 

“Ooh, I’ve got one,” said Bry. “Never have I ever had sex with someone for money.”

No one moved, and then very deliberately, Carrie drank. There was a collective intake of breath.

“What? When? Oh my god, did you get casting couched?” Phil asked, eyes huge and worried.

Carrie pulled an apologetic face. “Well, no, I haven’t actually had sex for money. I just hadn’t drunk yet and I was feeling really left out.”

“Face it,” Louise said, “we’re all really boring people, and that’s a good thing.” 

A brief, contemplative pause.

And then Dan drank. 

“ _Daniel_ ,” Louise said.

Dan met her eyes and shrugged. ‘What? I am allowed to be thirsty.” He paused. “Also there was that time when I was working as a hooker.”

“I think they prefer to be called ‘sex-workers’-“

“- or ‘individuals of negotiable affection’-“

“Can we not get into this now?” Phil said, rubbing his temples. “Dan has never had sex for money because I’ve never paid him and I’m the only person he’s ever had sex with-”

Dan raised his hand with very little hope of being listened to. “Can I just say that I have had sex with other people?”

“-and he can’t be a sex-worker because that would involve him going outside.”

There was another pause and then Bryony chipped in with “I think that’s a perk of the job, though, that as a sex-worker you can work from home-“

“Maybe in a way, we’re all sex-workers,” Louise said introspectively into her rosé.

“None of us are sex-workers,” Phil said loudly. “Dan, it’s your turn.”

“But I drank,” Dan said, innocent as a newborn lamb.

“I hate you,” Phil told him. “This was your idea.”

“Alright, alright,” Dan thought for a second, and then an evil look crossed his face. “Never have I ever used my YouTuber status to get someone into bed.”

Phil met his gaze solidly. “I’m not drinking because that’s not how it happened. You’re awful.”

Dan grinned at him. “Your boyfriend likes me.”

“Sadly, that is true, yes. But he’s got horrible taste.”

“Must do, he’s dating you.”

“Were you not hugged enough as a child? Is that why you’re so mean? Stop laughing,” Phil told Louise, in silent hysterics at his side.

A minor diversion was caused by Caspar drinking. “What?” he said defensive and shamefaced. “Not like, in a creepy way.”

“Caspar!” Louise said, delighted. “You sleazeball! I love it!”

“No, no, ok,” Caspar gestured to himself. “I have to work with what I’ve got, and what I’ve got is my face, my accent and my YouTube channel, and sadly, number three tends to work best. I don’t promise them anything, it’s just, y’know, ‘ooh, what’s your job?’ ‘I make videos online-‘”

“’- _not like that_ -‘” the rest of the room chorused in understanding.

“And apparently some people find that interesting. And they ask me how many subscribers I have and I go, ‘oh, y’know, a few,’ and they’re like ‘no, really, how many?’ and I say seven million and suddenly we’re in bed. I don’t really know how it happens, it just….does. So,” he rallied himself, “I thought it counted, so in the interests of honesty, I drank, and for that I should be commended.”

“How can someone so sleazy be so honest, and so pretty?” Louise asked, starry-eyed and speculative from the end of the table. Phil gently moved her rosé out of grabbing distance.

“’m not sleazy,” Caspar mumbled sadly and Bryony patted his shoulder.

“We’ve all done it. Well, actually, I think we’ve just established that we haven’t and it’s just you, but don’t worry, we’re not gonna denounce you to the police or anything.”

“So,” Phil said, mainly to salvage what he could of Caspar’s shredded dignity, “My turn I think. Never have I ever,” he thought, “tried to seduce my boyfriend wearing just a furry hat and mittens.”

“ _They were not mittens_.”

“I named no names,” Phil said angelically. “Dan, if you feel there is something you’d like to get off your chest, please do share with the class.”

Dan huffed and knocked back his drink. “They weren’t mittens,” he said mulishly. “They were gloves and they were cute.”

“They were furry and they had no defined fingers. Mittens, Dan. Mittens.”

“Mittens that worked on you,” Dan muttered and Louise laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

**

Cards Against Humanity wasn’t played in teams. But after their last game, Phil had been unanimously declared so horrible at it that he needed a keeper, and as always, the lot fell to Dan.

“We can’t say that,” Phil said, scandalised.

“Oh come on, it’s the point of the game,” Dan said sharply. It had been a long evening. He watched as Phil mouthed the words ‘Queen Elizabeth’s immaculate arsehole’ to himself in mute horror, and then played the card.

Their card for ‘what does Obama do to unwind?’ beaten by Tyler (‘a robust mongoloid’), but Phil was still whimpering to himself, and Dan elbowed him. “Shut up,” he said kindly. “Relax and be the horrible person you’d be if I weren’t here to distract everyone.”

Louise, who hadn’t been dealt into the game because she’d been putting Darcy to bed, was watching them both in a worryingly speculative way. Dan knew this, but even so, when she leant forwards and said “Phil!” imperatively, Dan was the one who jumped. “Your secret boyfriend!” 

It was like she was trying to surprise it out of him. Which Dan knew wouldn’t work, because Dan had tried to surprise it out of Phil, and Dan was a lot nastier than Louise, so he’d tried harder.

Phil looked up, still preoccupied by the Queen’s anus. “What?” he said, bewildered.

“Who is he?”

“A secret,” Phil said helplessly, then looked down at his cards. “I can’t say that.”

“The point,” Dan said, with just a suggestion of gritted teeth, “is that you don’t _have_ to say it. You just have to _think_ it.”

“That’s even worse!” Phil wailed, and Dan grabbed the card from him, flinging it at Tyler – quizmaster for this round – and turning to glare at Phil.

“It’s like being on a team with Mother Fucking Theresa,” he sniped, and felt even crosser when Phil just looked confused.

“Who’s Theres- _oh_ , I see,” he said finally. “And I choose to take that as a compliment.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Dan said bitterly, and turned back to the game. “Just give me the cards – you sit this one out. You sit _all_ of it out. It’s my game now.”

The look on Phil’s face said this had been his goal all along, but then he turned, saw Louise and her investigative expression, and hastily turned back to Dan.

“No, this is fine, I’ll be quiet,” he promised earnestly, and earned himself a groan from Dan.

“Ugh, fine,” he said. “Just pick a card at random and I’ll tell you if it’s good.”

“Would your boyfriend make you play Cards Against Humanity?” Louise asked evilly.

“If he were nice, no, he wouldn’t,” Phil said hopelessly. “But I’m gonna have to say yes.”

“He _is_ nice,” Dan insisted, drawing another card as prompted by Tyler.

For a brief moment, the table went still as everyone stared at Dan. “Wait,” Tyler said, “you like Phil’s boyfriend? _You_?”

“Hey,” Dan said, apparently offended. “I’m not actually a horrible person, you know. He makes Phil happy and he’s not a psychopath. That is all the criteria I am looking for. I have low standards when it comes to Phil.”

“Dan,” Louise said kindly, “You have the highest standards when it comes to Phil. They are unreasonably high. If this guy has passed your vetting process, I want to meet him.”

“Excuse me? _Vetting process_?” Dan said haughtily.

“I’m still here, by the way,” Phil said and was ignored.

“Yeah, hon, your vetting process, you have one,” Louise told him. “Who else here has done a collab with Phil?” Hands went up round the table. “Did anyone else get vetted by Dan for suitability before they could approach the throne?”

Dan squawked indignantly as a chorus went round the table, regardless of gender. “I do not have a –“

“’Sooooo,’” Tyler said in a horrible British accent. “’You’re doing a video with Phil, that’s so ace! So what’s it about?’”

“’How close will you be sitting?’”

“’Mandatory two-foot distance-‘”

“’-leave space for Jesus!’”

“‘Way! Way! Way for the King!’”

“OK, he doesn’t do that,” Phil said, chiming in on Dan’s behalf, and Louise just laughed at him.

“Face it, Phil, when you adopted Dan, you got a Grow-Your-Own-Guard-Dog kit,” she said kindly, and Phil pulled a face at her.

“Right, since you’re all awful and no one’s playing anymore, I’m going to read out this next card,” Dan said. “‘I like to keep the romance alive with what?’”

“Vetting everyone he comes into contact with?” someone said, very quietly.

“I heard that. And no. _I_ like to keep the romance alive with CHILD ABUSE,” Dan snapped, throwing down his card. “Which is not something that applies to you and me anymore, huh, Phil.”

“You were very much overage,” Phil said wearily, in the tones of someone who had had this argument many times.

“Aw, are you allowed around nineteen-year-olds now, Phil?” Dan asked, honey-sweet, and Phil elbowed him but remained stoic.

“The court mandate has been lifted, yes,” he said. “Your mum finally agreed to let it lapse.”

“Are you no longer a danger to nineteen year olds, then?” Connor asked, grinning.

“As far as I remember,” Phil said, with surprising dryness, “the nineteen year olds were a danger to me.”

Dan spread his hands. “What can I say? I knew what I wanted,” he said, leering inexpertly at Phil. “And what I wanted were those acres of pale, pasty, Northern flesh.”

Phil shuddered, as did most of the gathering around the table.

“Can you never say any of those words ever again?” Tyler asked.

“But particularly not in that order?” Phil added.

“So does your boyfriend know you’re here?” Louise asked, a bloodhound after the salient point, and Phil stared at her for a second.

“Of course he does? I didn’t just jet off to the other side of the planet without telling him.”

“And he didn’t want to come with?” she pressed.

“Yeah, he did,” Phil said, shifting a little and shrugging. “But, you know. He has a job. And I don’t know how much I’d have seen of him, anyway.”

“OK, this is just getting ridiculous,” PJ said, from the other end of the table. “It’s been like five months. You gotta introduce us to this guy, or he’s going to start thinking there’s something wrong with us.”

Phil stared around the table. “Yes. I wonder what on earth could give him that impression?” The popular response was a rain of Cards Against Humanity thrown at Phil, who batted them away. “OK, alright! Next time we get together, if he’s around, I’ll bring him.”

Dan, next to Phil, made a vaguely surprised noise, and Phil glanced at him with a ‘what?’ face. Dan just shrugged.

“Cool,” he said enigmatically. “He’s your boyfriend.” Then he picked up the stack of black cards. “Alright losers, Channel Five’s new documentary, eight washed-up celebrities and what?”

**

“OK, so remember, we must all behave normally,” Louise said, without noticeably loosening her death grip on Joe’s shoulder or dropping her rictus grin. They’d been sitting in charged anticipatory silence for the last half hour, ever since Louise had got Phil’s text saying that he and his bf were on their way, and the doorbell had just rung.

Zoe had been dispatched to answer it, which left the rest of them to take a deep breath before they plunged into an acquaintanceship with the newcomer, a newcomer worthy enough to be Phil Lester’s boyfriend. A newcomer who had, in fact, answered The Questions Three and passed the Bridge of Death which was Dan Howell.

“Dan likes him,” Louise said thoughtfully. Then: “oh God, Dan.”

“What about Dan?” Caspar asked.

“Did anyone invite Dan?” Louise asked urgently.

There was a frozen, horrified silence. “Oh my god, we’re horrible people,” Joe said in a tiny voice. “We’re actually horrible.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Louise said hurriedly, producing her phone from her bag. “I’ll just text him, and, you know, maybe they brought him along, like a dog.”

“But, we never need to think!” Caspar whispered, excusingly. “If you invite Phil, you get Dan too! They’re like a buy-one-get-one-free! And vice versa! You only ever need to invite one, and then the other one just turns up.”

“I- I did invite him,” PJ said, holding up a hopeful hand, and was ignored.

“It’s OK, I’ve sent the text.”

They paused as voices came nearer, and then out in the hall, a phone pinged. A very familiar laugh came through the wall, and everyone relaxed. 

“Oh, thank God, the Dan-and-Phil effect is still working,” Louise said, on a sigh of relief.

And then the door opened, and Zoe came in, looking puzzled.

“Guys – Dan and Phil are here.”

“Without the boyfriend?” Joe whispered.

Louise wasn’t as good at hiding her disappointment. “Aww.”

“That’s the sound I like to hear when I enter a room,” Dan said, appearing around the door and grinning.

“You,” Louise said accusingly. “Where is Phil’s boyfriend? Oh my god!” she gasped as a thought apparently hit her. “Did you kill him?”

“What?” said Dan. “No!”

“I wondered that,” Zoe agreed, nodding at her. “He’s not, like, underneath the floorboards in your flat, is he?”

“No,” Dan squeaked, scandalised.

“I knew something like this would happen,” Louise told the gathering, sitting down and shaking her head. The only one not to respond with a wise nod was PJ, sitting in the corner, looking alternately thoughtful and amused. “Dan, I mean, you don’t deal well with jealousy-“

“- I can be jealous of people and not murder them-“

“- when I first found out, I thought Dan might see him off,” Caspar admitted. “You’ve gotta admit, mate, it does look suspicious-“

“ _No it doesn’t._ ” Dan windmilled his arms in frustration, “Phil! Tell them I haven’t killed anyone!”

Phil appeared in the doorway next to him. “I thought we had to take our shoes off. Who have you killed?”

“ _No one_. They think I murdered your boyfriend.”

Phil raised his eyebrows, eerily calm. “Well, that’s ridiculous. He’s here.”

“What?” Louise meerkatted to attention. “He is? Where?”

Phil grinned at her, dropping his coat on the floor and making spooky gestures with his hands. “He’s in this very room.”

“Yes, he is,” Dan said in a loaded voice.

There was a very awkward silence, and then the other people in the room – minus PJ – went into an impromptu huddle at the end of the dining table.

“I think-”

“I mean, we all knew it was coming-”

“This is it, they’ve cracked-”

“I’ve heard of this thing, called _folie a deux_ -”

“I think they’ve just invented a boyfriend for Phil-”

“It’s because they never go outside-”

“They never _meet_ people-”

“Guys,” Dan said, screechy but holding onto his calm. “The boyfriend. Is me.”

As one, they turned to him.

“What?”

“The boyfriend is me,” he repeated.

They retreated back into the huddle. Louise was already tapping at her phone.

“It’s worse than we thought-”

“He’s convinced himself that he _is_ Phil’s boyfriend-”

“Has he convinced Phil, though? Is Phil OK?”

“It’s like Stockholm Syndrome,” Caspar said in tones of revelation, before Phil broke into their huddle.

“Guys – you know that’s not soundproof, right?” He asked conversationally. They all looked up. He was sitting on the sofa, looking unreasonably calm, and Dan, looking like a huffy owl, was sitting next to him. Phil’s hand was on his back, stroking gently, as if smoothing ruffled feathers. Dan looked furious, but Phil just looked fond. “We can hear you.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Dan said, in a small, injured voice. “Why would they think that, Phil?”

“I dunno, love,” Phil said simply. “You’re not radiating aggression right now even a little bit.”

“I hate you,” Dan sniped and slumped against Phil. “I hate our friends. Can we have new ones?”

“I want to state for the record that this doesn’t surprise me, and I think it’s great,” PJ said from his secluded corner. “So when the purge does come, I want to remain in the Inner Circle.”

“So,” Louise said as she and the others emerged from the emergency pow-wow. “Explain.”

Unexpectedly, it was PJ who answered. “It – doesn’t seem that complicated to me? Like. Dan and Phil wanted to try being in a relationship again but maybe didn’t want the pressure of being surrounded by fifty over-invested fucking yentas. So they kept it on the down-low, gradually introduced us to the idea that Phil was dating again, and then, when they decided to tell you that it was Dan he was dating, you accused Dan of murder. Sound about right?” he asked, turning towards the pair on the sofa.

Phil nodded. “That’s about it, yeah.”

Dan was still too incensed to speak.

There was another awkward pause, this time more apologetic.

“Sorry, Dan,” Caspar said eventually, going in for a hug which Dan did not return. “And, congrats?”

“Too late, you’re dead to me,” Dan snapped.

“We are really sorry,” Louise said. “We were – mainly joking?”

“No, you weren’t,” Dan said sulkily.

“We actually were. Well. Apart from Tyler, he high-key thought you’d murdered somebody. But he thought it was sweet!” Louise said, apparently trying to end on a high. “Y’know! That you loved Phil enough to murder someone!”

“ _That doesn’t make it any better-_ ”

“Yeah, it does,” Phil wrapped an arm around Dan’s shoulder and pressed a kiss to his temple. “C’mon, babe. And all of you, stop being mean to him.”

“I want new friends-“

“Shut up, no you don’t. Anyway, yeah,” Phil said, looking out as the rest of them settled into more relaxed positions. “PJ’s right. We thought we’d try again – you know, after the first time – but we didn’t want to be those guys who tried to be something again and again and just ended up crashing and burning every time, so. We decided to keep it quiet, see how it went. And it’s been six months!”

Louise made a small, happy sound in the back of her throat.

Phil grinned at her and squeezed Dan’s shoulders. “So we figured that if it all went well, we’d tell you first, then our families, then-“ he pulled a face and glanced at Dan.

“Maybe the world?” Dan finished for him and Phil smiled at him.

“We’ll see how it goes.”


End file.
